page_title: Ostinato
section_title: Ground Bass: Late Renaissance and Baroque
hierarchical_section_title: Ostinato / Classical music / Ground Bass: Late Renaissance and Baroque
caption_attribution_description: English: Purcell, Dido's Lament ground bass
context_page_description: In music, an ostinato is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, frequently in the same pitch. Well-known ostinato-based pieces include both classical compositions, such as Ravel's Boléro and the Carol of the Bells, and popular songs such as Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's "I Feel Love", Henry Mancini's theme from Peter Gunn, and The Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony".
  The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody in itself. Both ostinatos and ostinati are accepted English plural forms, the latter reflecting the word's Italian etymology. Strictly speaking, ostinati should have exact repetition, but in common usage, the term covers repetition with variation and development, such as the alteration of an ostinato line to fit changing harmonies or keys.
  If the cadence may be regarded as the cradle of tonality, the ostinato patterns can be considered the playground in which it grew strong and self-confident.
  — Edward E. Lewinsky
  Within the context of film music, Claudia Gorbman defines an ostinato as a repeated melodic or rhythmic figure that propels scenes that lack dynamic visual action.
context_section_description: Ground bass or basso ostinato (obstinate bass) is a type of variation form in which a bass line, or harmonic pattern (see Chaconne; also common in Elizabethan England as Grounde) is repeated as the basis of a piece underneath variations. Aaron Copland describes basso ostinato as "... the easiest to recognize" of the variation forms wherein, "... a long phrase—either an accompanimental figure or an actual melody—is repeated over and over again in the bass part, while the upper parts proceed normally [with variation]". However, he cautions, "it might more properly be termed a musical device than a musical form."
  
  One striking ostinato instrumental piece of the late Renaissance period is "The Bells", a piece for virginals by William Byrd. Here the ostinato (or 'ground') consists of just two notes:
  
  In Italy, during the seventeenth century, Claudio Monteverdi composed many pieces using ostinato patterns in his operas and sacred works. One of these was his 1650 version of "Laetatus sum", an imposing setting of Psalm 122 that pits a four-note "ostinato of unquenchable energy." against both voices and instruments:
  
  Later in the same century, Henry Purcell became famous for his skilful deployment of ground bass patterns.  His most famous ostinato is the descending chromatic ground bass that underpins the aria "When I am laid in earth" ("Dido's Lament") at the end of his opera Dido and Aeneas:
   While the use of a descending chromatic scale to express pathos was fairly common at the end of the seventeenth century, Richard Taruskin points out that Purcell shows a fresh approach to this musical trope: "Altogether unconventional and characteristic, however, is the interpolation of an additional cadential measure into the stereotyped ground, increasing its length from a routine four to a haunting five bars, against which the vocal line, with its despondent refrain ("Remember me!"), is deployed with marked asymmetry. That, in addition to Purcell's distinctively dissonant, suspension-saturated harmony, enhanced by additional chromatic descents during the final ritornello and by many deceptive cadences, makes this little aria an unforgettably poignant embodiment of heartache." See also: Lament bass.
  However, this is not the only ostinato pattern that Purcell uses in the opera. Dido's opening aria "Ah, Belinda" is a further demonstration of Purcell's technical mastery: the phrases of the vocal line do not always coincide with the four-bar ground:
  
  "Purcell's compositions over a ground vary in their working out, and the repetition never becomes a restriction." Purcell's instrumental music also featured ground patterns. A particularly fine and complex example is his Fantasia upon a Ground for three violins and continuo: 
  
  The intervals in the above pattern are found in many works of the Baroque Period. Pachelbel's Canon also uses a similar sequence of notes in the bass part:
   
  
  Two pieces by J.S.Bach are particularly striking for their use of an ostinato bass: the Crucifixus from his Mass in B minor and the Passacaglia in C minor for organ, which has a ground rich in melodic intervals:
   The first variation that Bach builds over this ostinato consists of a gently syncopated motif in the upper voices:
   This characteristic rhythmic pattern continues in the second variation, but with some engaging harmonic subtleties, especially in the second bar, where an unexpected chord creates a passing implication of a related key: 
   In common with other Passacaglias of the era, the ostinato is not simply confined to the bass, but rises to the uppermost part later in the piece:
   A performance of the entire piece can be heard here.
caption: Purcell, Dido's Lament ground bass
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